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Posted by
Saeed Amidi !!!
on 2011-09-24

PUBLIC:

They are not a fund. Here is how they work:
They take 1% of your company and they are simply over priced landlords that tag along other VC's and funds opportunistically. They over charge you $700/month for a cubicle of 3.

The 1% is because they do say that they introduce you to VCs and angels. But their so called angels are service providers that want to charge you something, and the VCs can not stand the site of Saeed and his team and only tolerate them because he does once in a blue moon come across gems like dropbox -- A Canadian Company -- or Zoosk.

Using them as a reference or for introduction is a HUGE mistake. You get one chance with investors, and these idiots are not good references. That is why I call them a total liability. Any respectable VC bad mouths them.

Moreover, if you are anywhere near being a great company, Amidzad people will work against you to push your valuation down. This way their small investment turns into huge profits. That is how they paid 250K for 2.5M post valuation of Zoosk initially !!! The company is now worth 2.5 Billion supposedly, and Saeed openly gloats that the Founders were clueless and did not know how to negotiate.

By the way, this is why they target Universities too. Zoosk came out of Berkeley.

The reason they cater to foreign countries is also to find clueless entrepreneurs. But there is another insidious reason. No one else in their right mind wants to pay their ridiculously high prices. But foreign governments who have deep pockets and nowhere else to go are willing to pay them. And by the way, they jack up the price on you as soon as they get a chance.

One last thing, they absolutely HATE thefunded.com! A friend of mine who was at Plug and Pay -- that is what he called them, plug and pay -- said that he was told directly to avoid thefunded.com and never to read it. I wonder why?!